3 ms·

AWS costs can destroy you, unless you’re using managed AWS services to replace bloated IT org full of support personnel not doing much productive work in first

AWS costs can destroy you, unless you’re using managed AWS services to replace bloated IT org full of support personnel not doing much productive work in first place. If you really need scale, AWS can be cheaper than rolling your own infra and abstractions, granted you make it a mission to keep laser focus on AWS costs. Primary ideal use case for AWS is internal Amazon usage. Charge internally but write off as expenses, for infra you had sitting idle anyway. Pretty sure AWS and rest of Amazon are separate legal entities to take advantage of tax laws.

ReflectedImage 4y ago
I'm not so sure about the cheaper at scale. Renting is usually more expensive than owning. The larger you get, the more expensive renting is compared to owning.
- lokedhs 4y ago
  The best use cause is a system where you have vast spikes in compute requirements on rare occasions. You can then use AWS to get those resources for limited period of time. For this user case, it actually works pretty well. For anything else, there are always going to be cheaper and better solutions.
- CuriousCosmic 4y ago
  AWS fits the niche of "holy fuck my site is blowing up and I don't want it to crumble while I onboard new users or some event is going on". You probably shouldn't use it for day to day ops but it's a really good spillway for extremely temporary & particularly for unexpected spikes of traffic. Of course you could argue that AWS is particularly bad but I think this applies to most non-bare-metal instance cloud services.
Marsymars 4y ago
> AWS costs can destroy you, unless you’re using managed AWS services to replace bloated IT org full of support personnel not doing much productive work in first place. OTOH, if you have an understaffed infra team that gets by by accumulating technical debt on infrastructure, AWS takes away that option at several levels of abstraction.

ReflectedImage 4y ago

I'm not so sure about the cheaper at scale. Renting is usually more expensive than owning. The larger you get, the more expensive renting is compared to owning.

lokedhs 4y ago
The best use cause is a system where you have vast spikes in compute requirements on rare occasions. You can then use AWS to get those resources for limited period of time. For this user case, it actually works pretty well. For anything else, there are always going to be cheaper and better solutions.
CuriousCosmic 4y ago
AWS fits the niche of "holy fuck my site is blowing up and I don't want it to crumble while I onboard new users or some event is going on". You probably shouldn't use it for day to day ops but it's a really good spillway for extremely temporary & particularly for unexpected spikes of traffic. Of course you could argue that AWS is particularly bad but I think this applies to most non-bare-metal instance cloud services.

Marsymars 4y ago

> AWS costs can destroy you, unless you’re using managed AWS services to replace bloated IT org full of support personnel not doing much productive work in first place. OTOH, if you have an understaffed infra team that gets by by accumulating technical debt on infrastructure, AWS takes away that option at several levels of abstraction.